Never

Although this novel features many powerful female characters, in many ways Abdul John Haddad functions as its main protagonist. As a Lebanese American, he speaks the language and understands the culture of the terrorist leader he is hunting, even though he is a Christian. When he is first introduced, he is posing as an itinerant salesman of smuggled cigarettes, a cover that allows him to roam across the country and engage with the local population. He is a spy familiar from WWII thrillers, wearing boots that have a state-of-the-art phone hidden in one heel and a tracking device in the other. The young man is physically attractive to women and especially to the young widow Kiah, with whom he travels across the Saharan desert on smuggler Hakim’s rickety bus along with the shipment of cocaine used by the terrorists to help finance their global acts of terrorism.

Abdul is a resourceful person. He prefers to avoid violence when possible, but is able to defend himself, like when a group of men try to rob him or when he must use the garrote hidden in his scarf to strangle one of the terrorists holding him and the other migrants captive in the gold mine. The scarf with the wire inside was one of the few things he requested before he boarded the bus and in retrospect was a kind of foreshadowing of the level of danger of his mission. It also signaled that he was aware of the danger and that he was willing to kill if necessary to protect his own life and to protect the mission.

Like Tamara, Abdul is both a round and dynamic character, changing throughout the story. He is haunted by traumatic events in his earlier life. The darkest is the kidnapping and murder of his younger sister. This created a darkness inside him that he fights hard not to allow to the surface. It almost overtakes him when he is fighting off the men who try to rob him, causing him to react with excessive violence that almost leads to his killing one of them. This causes him to wonder, “What kind of man am I?” (211). The narrator answers his question: “He was like the fox in the henhouse, killing every bird, more than he could eat, more than he could ever carry back to his hole, biting and slashing for the sheer joy of it” (211). This kind of wanton killing, not out of necessity but out of pleasure, scares Abdul, who struggles to maintain control over this aspect of his personality. While he is dedicated to his mission like Tamara, it does not seem to be for ideals of democracy and freedom but rather out of the need for revenge.

Abdul’s other trauma is the result of a young woman who rejected him due to the racism of her parents. Although still a young man of 25 when the novel opens, he seems to have already given up on forming any kind of intimate relationship with a woman, choosing instead to build a wall between himself and Kiah during the journey. While he rationalizes this as being necessary to his cover, it is also true that he is afraid to allow himself to be vulnerable to a woman again and risk being hurt. His true nature shows through, however, and he is kind to Kiah’s son and protects her from the lecherous people-smuggler by paying for the additional money he demands. Although he struggles to imagine a life with Kiah, in the end he cannot imagine one without her. His identity as an Arab American has made it impossible for him to integrate into mainstream American culture. This is in contrast to Tab who is much more comfortable in his mixed cultural identity. Although Kiah is from a different country and culture than his Lebanese background, she too is a Christian raised in a predominantly Muslim country, and like him she has suffered trauma and heartache at a young age.

Barely 20, Kiah is a young mother and widow from an increasingly impoverished village on the edge of Lake Chad. Because of climate change and human interference with the lake, its size has decreased drastically over the last few decades and no longer can support the population that relies on it for farming and fishing in many villages on its shores. Even if the lake were not shrinking, there is no place in patriarchal society for a young widow without male protection. She tries to rely on her cousin, but his feelings for her are more than familial and cause his wife to react with jealousy. Left on her own, she must make difficult and frightening decisions to provide a better life for herself and her son. Kiah is a round character and is also dynamic.

Tamara is impressed by Kiah when they first meet in the village. The narrator describes Kiah as “strikingly beautiful, with black eyebrows and bold cheekbones and a curved Saracen nose, and the look in her dark eyes suggested determination and strength” (19). Tamara confirms these personality traits after spending some time with the younger woman, noting that “she began to sense a core of steely determination within Kiah” (20). Although raised in a small village, as a Christian, she studied in a Catholic school so was able to speak some French. Her Christian identity makes her somewhat of an outsider like Tamara (who is Jewish) and also allows for her to fit more easily into a romantic life in Europe with Abdul, which is where she ends when the war starts. For someone raised in a patriarchal society with little life experience, she is both financially savvy and street smart. She sells her husband’s boat for a good price, which provides her the money needed to pay the smugglers to take her and her son to Libya. She also quickly has suspicions about the restaurant job, which is in fact a cover for a brothel. Rather than staying for the money like her young neighbor, or allowing herself to become a victim, she reacts quickly and decisively, escaping before she is forced into prostitution and human trafficked.

Kiah’s character trait of steely determination combines with decisive action during her trip across the desert. She sets the leaked gasoline on fire, saving Abdul’s life and enabling them to escape from captivity. When they are sleeping in the car, she makes the first physical move, kissing him on the lips while he sleeps. Abdul has fought hard to resist his attraction to her, but when she saves their lives, he is impressed: “She showed not bewilderment or anxiety. She was cool and resolute. What a woman, he thought” (348). While she is a round character, her beauty and strength of character were there from the start, making her less dynamic than some of the other characters.

President Pauline Green is one of the first characters the book introduces in the Prologue. While the US has not yet had a female president, and the narrator identifies her as a Republican, she seems to represent a realistic centrist candidate, similar to centrist Democrats. While her marriage is not initially presented as being in serious trouble, it is more a match of compatibility and convenience than passion. A former gymnastic champion, she is an energetic and capable commander. Her challenger, Senator James Moore, is attacking from the right of her party from a hawkish and socially conservative platform. His actions are often impulsive and seem to reflect the extremist right wing of the Republican party in the US today. Her former VP also attacks her, as she asks him to resign after discovering he was having a sexual dalliance with a 16-year-old girl. Green’s only reliable political allies are her Chief of Staff, Jacqueline Brody, and the head of NSA, Gus Blake. This latter relationship shifts from confidants to lovers as the nuclear war begins.

Pauline is both a round and dynamic character and changes throughout the novel. She is a capable world leader, able to handle difficult personalities and act calmly and decisively in the midst of betrayals and crises. Yet she is unable to address the problems in her personal life directly, preferring to worry that she and her husband have grown apart and that he is having an affair with an employee at her daughter Pippa’s school. She is also unable to communicate effectively with her daughter, although in the end they reunite as her husband chooses to abandon Pippa to be with his mistress as the world ends. While her professional demeanor does not change or develop during the novel, her personal or romantic persona does as she comes to realize that her feelings for Gus are sexual. Pauline shows high social and emotional intelligence throughout, especially in her professional sphere. She is able to read the subtext of conversations with others and expresses concern at the awesome responsibility and power she possesses as the leader of a country with nuclear capabilities.